RootsWeb URL’s Begin Working Again

RootsWeb URL’s Begin Working Again

Big news for genealogists! Websites hosted by the internet’s oldest and largest free genealogy community, RootsWeb, have started to come back online! Here are the details.

It’s been 7 months since RootsWeb was made unavailable after the company’s security team discovered issues with the website. At that time, Ancestry.com’s Information Security Team received a message indicating a security researcher had found a file which contained email addresses, username and password combinations from a RootsWeb.com server. Ancestry.com’s research has confirmed that the files does contain information related to users of Rootsweb’s surname list information, a service that the company had elected to retire earlier in 2017.

What’s currently working

On August 27, 2018, the RootsWeb blog was updated with a post announcing that homepages and freepages URLs are working again. It does appear that at least at the moment some homepages are actually still down, as a read through the comments on the blog indicates that many users are still unable to access their pages. But what we do know is that webpages hosted by the site are beginning to come back up, leading to much rejoicing amongst personal users and genealogical societies alike.

Is your hosted website still unavailable?

According to the RootsWeb homepage, they are bringing hosted websites back in phases.

RootsWeb has identified about 600 USGENWEB sites to bring back first. Owners of these sites should have received an email with instructions on how to reset their password and get to their content. These sites are now available from the appropriate USGENWEB page. If you believe you should have been contacted, please contact: Questions about USGENWEB. Please include the name of your site and any other information you have.

For those that would just like to download their websites contents from RootsWeb, go to Request Download Links.

Not familiar with RootsWeb?

RootsWeb is the Internet’s oldest and largest free genealogy community. Their award winning resources and databases, which include free web space, mailing lists, and message boards, are utilized by societies and individuals alike.

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